Ephemera, 12-18-2007

In Minneapolis, the local college Muslims have claimed the "meditation room" as their personal Mosque and harass non-Muslim students who don't follow Muslim rules about segregation, shoe wear, etc.

Time to close down the freakin' meditation room if you ask me.

UPDATE: A reader informs me this is overblown, and the journalist's report is suspect. Go to the letters on the site.

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I'm a big fan of the comedian Jim Breuer, and I've been hunting for one of his bits where he describes playing with his little daughter and ends up scaring the hell out of her (it's so dead-on true). So I cruise Youtube.com once in a while to see if anyone's posted it. So far no luck.

But I did hap across this discussion he had with Joe Rogan (of "Fear Factor" fame). Breuer explains about being faithful to his wife, which prompts Rogan to explain why he can't imagine ever getting married. This is one of those cases where someone else's perspective, in this case Rogan's, that completely astounds and confounds me. Imho, this is what happens when someone young and attractive takes Social Darwinism a bit too seriously and can't envision anything farther out than beyond the end of his dick.

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Have recently seen:

Reign Over Me with Don Cheadle and Adam Sandler.
I continue to be impressed at Sandler's choices, and Don Cheadle is just one of those guys who's fun to watch in practically anything.

Sandler plays a guy who lost his wife and children in the 9/11 attacks, and then lost his mind.

I enjoyed it, but some of the implausibilities and sentiments will make cynical folks yack up into their popcorn. If you don't like your heart being touched without your permission (a great line said to me by one of my college roommates whilst we were watching a weepy), skip this one.

If you don't mind your comedy and drama on the same plate (and if you're secretly a Jerry Lewis fan*), check this one out.

*I contend that Sandler has claimed the same genre territory that only Jerry Lewis, Carol Burnett and Red Skelton were able to pull off with any success: pathos and laughs in just the right proportions. I also think that's why critics hate Sandler; they're allergic to this kind of entertainment (always have been) and just can't put their finger on why.


The Good Shepherd with Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie
Even though M. Blowhard warned us away, there it was on the library shelf, and I snatched it in case I had some spare time. Found it and found out that M. Blowhard was right.

My only additional observation (beyond M. Blowhard's) is I spent most of the movie trying to figure out how to describe the one look Matt Damon wears on his face through the entire movie (which I'm sure he was directed to do - or he was so intimidated by being directed by Robert DeNiro that he couldn't get past it); and here it is:

It's the same look that (I imagine) most of us have on our face while urinating - vague concentration on the task at hand while our mind is off somewhere else, but not doing much there either.

Oh, and we see them using waterboarding, so apparently American has always used torture (not that I believed otherwise).

Skip it, I say.

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In that same library trip, I picked up Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Vincent Bugliosi.

Short version: Oswald did it; he did it a alone; his motive was he'd failed at everything, including marriage, and so decided to cash it all in.

No, I didn't read all 1,500+ pages, Dear Lord. But I did spot-read about 200. It's awfully repetitive and redundant and strident. You can use the old reading a newspaper article trick - start at the top and bail once you've read enough.

Here's my opinion based on this book, if the drawings of the photos of the autopsy are accurate, then the wounds all point to being caused by someone above and behind Kennedy's right side, just as Oswald was (and his being up there in the book repository is not disputed). And if that's the case, the infamous "back and to the side" head jerk that JFK does is really a common neuromuscular reaction to getting shot in the head, where all the muscles reflexively spasm, but the back muscles attached to the head are stronger than the corresponding chest and abdominal muscles; hence, the backwards jerk. It does look like only Oswald's bullets connected, even if there were other shooters.

However, it's odd that we don't have the actual photos of the autopsy. So they could all be BS.

So, I think we will probably never know all the details behind the assignation of JFK.

In hunting down the Zapruder film, I ran across this little bit of fun. Just like some have done with the Apollo missions' photos and footage, someone has gone through and PROVEN that the Zapruder film is all a fake. (Yeah, right.) Still, it's fun to see how far people will take it.

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Surfing the Amazon.com MP3 store, I came across this lovely contribution to the pantheon of Christmas song collections. To paraphrase an old George Carlin bit (about the color of bandaids), they gave someone a desk, a pad of paper, and a pencil (and a recording studio) to accomplish this.


Note: I'm kinda crunched these days for time, so I've been letting more typos than usual get by. I will try and circle around and fix things when I get the chance.